(a golden shovel with lines from “Poetry” by Diane Seuss)

Sliding through farmland just south of Lake Michigan, no
words can sketch the enormity of ‘hyperscale’; does it matter,
what’s lost? Nameless creeks, corn tassles, red-winged blackbirds, the  
breathy loam suffocated in its sleep? Here cricketsong lost to awful
shriek, an empire of darkness spewing terrible music,
inescapable dirge playing night and day; the groan of
gigawats greedily gulped. Or maybe it’s the
aquifer’s shudder, or beauty’s death rattle,
sonic ghost coming close,
closer.